Can i be penalized?

Competitor linked to me on garbage page...

[Unca_Tim]

Hi Guys,
I've been building a website for the last few months following the suggestions found here. Was recently crawled and included in google, and am doing quite well. One of my competitors must have noted our rankings and, I guess, figured he could capitalized on our success.

He's added a garbage page with repeated keywords placed low on a page that can't be seen until you page down. He's got a funky banner at the top with a huge anchor link pointed at his website. Google has picked this up and it is starting to get some exposure. I'm hoping this won't last for long.

Along the bottom there's also about 20 links
repeated keyword/repeated keyword/repeated keyword,
and he's linked to our site there.

Is there any chance I could be penalized because of this shabby work?

Thanks for your input,
Tim

[dnbjason]

You can not be penalized for people linking to you.

[AthlonInside]

Though it should help your ranking a bit. :)

[Unca_Tim]

yeah...I figured any benefits would be to me, but i don't like being associated with this kind of mess...:)

[coosblues]

The longer you are in the "game" the more you can expect competitors doing such things. I have many links pointing to my site which I'd prefer not to have, but since I do not reciprocate the link they are not hurting my site. Just watch your outgoing links and try not to worry about the incoming links which you don't want (that are sure to happen)

[seofreak]

>>but since I do not reciprocate the link they are not hurting my site

that's the point to remember :)